But then there was this interesting one, of an old useful idiot spreading some communist garbage in print:

They aren’t the young useful idiots, but the old. But what’s really interesting is the actual story there. From the “Worker’s Vanguard“:

Trayvon Martin Case: Black Oppression and Gun Laws in America

No to Gun Control! Down With Racist Vigilantism!

Communists against gun control, you say? Well, this is where things get interesting, as the broken clock is right once a day:

Upholding the right to armed self-defense, Marxists oppose gun control laws, which are a means to enforce a monopoly of violence in the hands of the capitalist state. Gun control leaves guns in the hands of cops, criminals, vigilantes and Klansmen. Gun control kills, and it kills black people in particular.

In the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, the most democratic period for black people in America’s history, many recalcitrant Southern state governments tried to outlaw possession of firearms by blacks. In response, the federal Freedmen’s Bureau widely distributed circulars that read in part, “All men, without distinction of color, have the right to keep arms to defend their homes, families, or themselves.”

The Northern bourgeoisie, acting on its class interests, went on to make peace with the Southern planters, and blacks were forced into backbreaking labor on the land as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Following the end of Union Army occupation of the South during Reconstruction, naked white-supremacist rule was restored. Jim Crow segregation was enforced by police-state repression, supplemented by the extralegal terror of the Ku Klux Klan. As race-terror swept the South in the late 19th century, anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells wrote:

“The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.

“The lesson this teaches and which every Afro American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”

Black self-defense has historically been met with frenzied state repression. The earliest 20th-century gun control laws were passed in states like South Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi as a way to disarm blacks in the face of KKK terror.

Well, it’s right about the racist roots of gun control, though the “Northern bourgeoisie, acting on its class interests” is the kind of simplified stupid you’d expect from communists justifying everything with their grand theory of “I want your stuff and I’ll kill you to get it!”

Now, the interesting part is that when the communists, who are busy telling themselves they’re for the black oppressed proletariat protecting themselves from the white imperialist pig-dogs, start to look at laws that actually protect self-defense, then the laws are suddenly racist.

“Stand Your Ground”: License to Kill

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law eliminated the historic requirement that in order to claim self-defense, a person facing deadly force must first try to remove himself, if feasible, before himself using such force. Passed in 2005 amid a campaign to “get tough on crime”—code for targeting black people—the law is an open invitation to just the kind of racist vigilante violence that killed Trayvon Martin.

Now, this is where modern liberalism/leftism and communism coincide. Because the communists believe that oppressed black proletariat should be forced by law to run from their violent murderous pig-dog capitalist oppressors, even though they should violently defend themselves against their oppressors. Oh, wait, they claim that if don’t have a duty to retreat, you’re now sanctioning oppression of the proletariat. Except for that whole thing where you have to be attacked first. But it’s racist to defend yourself… except black people should defend themselves against white people based on color, which isn’t racist. Communist logic.

Over 20 state governments, centered on the states of the slaveholders’ Confederacy, have passed such laws, with bipartisan support. In doing so, they certainly did not have black self-defense in mind. A case in point occurred in 2005 in Georgia, a “Stand Your Ground” state. John McNeil, a black man, was rushed in front of his home by a white man who had been threatening his family with a knife. McNeil fired a warning shot but his assailant continued toward him. McNeil fired again and killed him. Initially, he was not charged in the killing. But prosecutors went after him a year later, and now McNeil is serving a life sentence.

See what they did there? “Certainly did not” – well, they probably didn’t. Because lawmakers probably passed the law with citizens in mind, not colors of citizens in mind.

Georgia went after McNeil, Florida’s legislators clearly intended to protect white people (or brown people with white surnames) from prosecution. In McNeil’s case, his assailant had a knife on his person and was going for him, but even Salon.com (in a piece demonizing stand-your-ground) says:

McNeil jumped out of the car and fired a warning shot at the ground insisting that Epp back off. Instead of retreating, Epp charged at McNeil while reaching for his pocket, so McNeil fired again, this time fatally striking Epp in the head. (Epp was found to have a folding knife in his pocket, although it was shut.)

This is another reason why you don’t fire warning shots. The “warning shot” to the would-be assailant then means the assailant’s in fear for his life, and a situation that would be cut-and-dried becomes a mess. As with many cases where the public doesn’t know all the information and we don’t know all the details of the situation, there’s probably a lot more to the story. Of course, painting it as “bad white guy” (which he was) attacks “good black guy” (which he also seems to be) helps to miss the actual series of events. You now have a dead guy who threatened the shooter, but at the time he was shot, he wasn’t making a deadly force movement with a knife in his pocket, and only started drawing it (if he did at all) after being shot at (warning shot). Suddenly, things are different. Now the would-be-assailant is the victim of being shot at, and it’s a mess.

The NRA did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Still, Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP State Conference, argues, “The NRA would be screaming about the injustice of his conviction if John had been white and shot a black assailant that came at him on his property armed with a knife.” (McNeil grew up in North Carolina, where the local NAACP chapter, led by Barber, was the first to pick up on his case in Georgia.) (ST- Note that knife he was “armed with” was in his pocket. No movement indicating deadly force, no reasonable man believes he’s in fear for his life if someone has a knife, folded, in his pocket. Changes things, doesn’t it?)

Barber was clear that the NAACP remains firmly against stand your ground laws because “they give cover to those who may engage in racial profiling and racialized violence,” adding that “There is a history and legacy of discriminatory application of the law” that continues to this day. “African-Americans are caught in curious position. On one hand, we fight against stand your ground laws, but once the laws are on the books they aren’t applied to us.”

There might be a reason for some of that. The NAACP is firmly against self-defense laws because they’re leftists. If they cared about black people, they’d be pushing for further self-defense laws (famously Condoleeza Rice’s father defended the family from KKK Night Riders by going on armed patrols); and if the NAACP thinks those laws don’t apply, they could try supporting the law. Heck, even the communists get self-defense half-right.

The NRA’s job isn’t to insert itself into every gun case in the country, believe it or not. The NRA didn’t run down to back up Zimmerman, but have stated they want to see all the facts. Why defend someone whose gun use might be indefensible? The law is just, whether Zimmerman or McNeil followed the law is up to a jury. What happened is up to the court to figure out.

And back to the communists:

In Florida and other states, possessing firearms is illegal for minors as well as for adults who have been convicted on drug charges or were, as youths, judged delinquent on such charges. Under racist U.S. “law and order,” these categories are overwhelmingly applicable to black people. Since he was under 18, Trayvon Martin had no legal right to be carrying a firearm, and thus no right to use one in self-defense. If he had been armed during his encounter with George Zimmerman, he might be alive today. But in this racist society, his survival may also have been a ticket to prison and possibly death row.

So limiting possession of firearms by criminals is racist? Communist logic.

There’s an argument to be made that criminals who’ve served their time should have all their rights restored, but that’s usually viewed with a pretty skeptical eye based on recidivism; and isn’t based on race, but on the question of what criminals have done and likelihood they will do again versus does serving their time mean they’re now free men again.

There’s plenty of precedent for minors using firearms in self defense. As to minors carrying firearms, well, it’s interesting that you can’t drink or own a handgun or carry under 21, but you can vote and serve in the military at 18. That Martin couldn’t carry wasn’t due to his race, it was due to his age. There’s an argument against that as well, but it isn’t race-based. Years ago, children were taught to be responsible with firearms rather than fear and hate them, and it wasn’t an issue. (See the email about schools in 1960 vs schools in 2000s for a quick comparison.)

There’s also this:

It reminds us that the reason we have a jury system, and look at things on a case by case basis, is indeed that each case is different (though there are many that are similar).

It’s interesting that groups like the International Communist League that writes the Worker’s Vanguard and the NAACP would both be against self-defense laws, while simultaneously claiming that they are oppressed. Who’s to protect the oppressed? The state, as controlled by the ICL or NAACP, or whatever other leftist-statist group there is.

Leaving citizens to their own ends, trusting them with their own defense, leaving people to be, goes against their chosen utopias that they wish to engineer through force of law. Gun control is control. Under the ICL, it’s a tool to manufacture a fantasy worker’s paradise (which has killed over 94 million so far), under the NAACP, it’s to manufacture a world where Colored People are Advanced, according to their own title.

Armed individuals don’t need state protection. They don’t need state redistribution. Independent individuals don’t need state guidance, they don’t need racial or economic “justice”, they don’t need someone else to tell them how to live and how to live safely. They certainly don’t need someone claiming their case justifies the social upheaval and revolutions that some political group is calling for.

Gun control is control. It’s a tool of the state, whether the racist institutions of the 1800s to 1950s that oppress non-whites, or a tool of the racist and/or statist institutions of the 21st century that seek to make everyone a victim by blaming whites (and hispanics that suddenly become white, or blacks who are ignored).